In the past two weeks I have been interviewed twice for Television and made statements to Newspaper Reporters re The PJM. Yesterday, I received two PJM’s one as a posthumous award for my father and one for myself, in a blaze of publicity with an MP in attendance and The Queen’s Representative taking the salute. The mood among veterans was that we held our heads up high and bowed them at The Sounding of The Last Post, how did you hang your heads? In shame I wonder? Well if you didn’t you should have, you were the butt of jokes from just about all The Veterans on Parade, there was even a tear or two shed at the unveiling of The NMBVA Memorial Stone to honour those that did not return.

The compaarison between The Governments of the UK and Australia and New Zealand was only too apparent, the talk too was of The ANZACs equivalent to the UK MoD involvement on how THEY do things and how WE do things for our Veterans. There is NO comparison and NO compassion as sad as it may seem regarding the UK.

I can’t speak for all the other Malayan/Malaysian Veterans but I do know that the second phase of my campaign to honour those fallen veterans has started and it is to discredit the the name of Her Majesty’s Government who are receiving this correspondence. The double standards, the spin and deceit in which some of you are in breach of your own Ministerial Code for which I feel embarrassed to be British.

I had the honour of a Malaysian Colonel salute me yesterday, I would like to think that he was saluting not only 12 of my colleagues of the 519 that never made it back but of the other 507 too.

I wore my Pingat Jasa Malaysia Medal with pride yesterday, I shall wear both in future at every photo opportunity I can muster.

A disgusted and very angry

John Cooper

Pingat Kami-Hak Kami

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HD Committee: Amateurs in a Professional World
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